Top 10 Home Brew Beer Recipes

To home brew a great beer—whether it's all-grain or extract—requires, first and foremost, an understanding of the process and mastery of brewing technique. That's not to say creative, well-balanced recipes with all the right ingredients don't help with the final product. We scoured brewing books, listened to beer podcasts, and talked to brewmasters to find ten of the best homebrew recipes out there, representing a range of beer styles. The recipes we found come from some of the best professional brewers in the country as well as absurdly dedicated homebrewers. Cheers!

About the Recipes and Directions

About the Recipes and Directions

Original Gravity (OG): The amount of sugars present in the wort before the yeast is pitched

Final Gravity (FG): The amount of residual sugars present in the beer after fermentation

Bitterness: Measured in International Bittering Units (IBU), the higher the number the more bitterness you can expect

Color: The Standard Reference Measurement (SRM) reflects degress Lovibond which range from 3.5 for a pilsner shade to over 25 for a nearly opaque stout.

Hops: Different hop strains provide different flavors and impart varying levels of bitterness. The percentage listed indicates the bitterness level for that strain. The number of minutes listed in the recipe indicates how long each addition should be boiled. Thus a 60 minute hop addition should be added at the beginning of the boil and a 5 minute hop addition should be added 5 minutes before the flame is turned off and cooling has begun. Dry hop additions get added after fermentation has been completed.

Tips and Tricks

Learn your boil-off rate: Boil a fixed amount of water as a test to find out how much water your system loses to evaporation during a boil (it can vary from brewer to brewer with variables such as kettle size and burner output). This will tell you how much wort you need in order to reach your targeted batch size. For instance, if you fill your kettle with 4 gallons of water and boil it for a half hour and find that you're left with 3.5 gallons of water then you know that you're boiling away a half gallon every 30 minutes. A typical 5 gallon batch with a 60 minute boil will require you to start with 6 gallons of wort.

Adjusting the gravity of a beer: If your gravity readings aren't what you're targeting you can add dry malt extract to raise the gravity or add water to lower the gravity. Just make sure that dry malt extract adjustments are added at the beginning of the boil.

Adjusting the bitterness of a beer: The bitterness levels (Alpha Acids or (%AA) of hops vary from crop to crop, but you can make some quick adjustments to ensure that you're bitterness remains consistent. Just plug the numbers into a brewing software program or free online tool like beer calculus to figure out how much hops to add to a beer to hit a recipe's targeted bitterness level.

Yeast Quantities: Pitching the proper amount of yeast is hugely important for any recipe. We highly recommend using Mr. Malty's Pitching Rate Calculator to determine how much yeast you'll need for any beer recipe. The calculator is a free online tool and is also available as a paid iPhone app.

Blood Orange Hefeweizen

Blood Orange Hefeweizen

This one comes from the now-famous founder and president of Dogfish Head Craft Ales, Sam Calagione (pictured). Calagione now host the television series, Brewmasters on The Discovery Channel, and is known for an ambitious, experimental and sometimes audacious approach to brewing beer (think, using saliva for starch conversion). This recipe is from Calagione's book, Extreme Brewing.

Directions
Boil and add hop additions according to the schedule above. Peel the blood oranges and separate sections of fruit. Discard half the peels. Cut the remainder of peels and fruit sections into small pieces. Use a grater as you only want part of the rind. The white will add extreme bitterness. Heat fruit and peels in a half gallon of water to 160F and then turn off heat. Let the fruit steep as it cools. Cool the wort and steeping fruit to 70-75F and add to fermenter.